The Los Angeles Angels had no real inkling that Shohei Ohtani was going to pick them in free agency.
In fact, Angels general manager Billy Eppler was so shocked to learn that Ohtani had chosen the Angels, he literally missed his chair when trying to sit down after taking the call from Ohtani’s agents.
“I whiffed on the chair and fell all the way to the ground,” Eppler said, via Jeff Miller of the Orange County Register. “I was just stunned. It was a pretty remarkable moment. … There’s so much adrenaline pumping. I didn’t even feel it.”
The Angels pulled out all the stops to try to bring Ohtani to Anaheim, but it sounds like they weren’t getting their hopes up. Now that they’ve got him, they can really start to look ahead and dream of what he can do for them.
